DHGF Interview: Codebrush Games

Codebrush Game is an independent developer located in Seoul, South Korea. They are currently working on their first title, ArcheBlade, which is presently in open beta, and we had the chance to speak with them on the game..

Robert Hubbs – DHGF – How did the team of developers come together to form Codebrush? You can check out Archeblade on their Steam page.

Codebrush Games – Similar to other indie developer stories, the founding members of Codebrush were teammates from more prominent game studio in Korea (NCsoft) who were developing a FPS title at the time. One day, the team was dissolved by the company due to some reasons not very clear to us although the official announcement said it was due to business-related issues. So we were in a situation where each of us had to go our separate way. Then it crossed my mind that if I lose this chance, it would take me at least 10 years to get a team as talented as this. So although it was a risky move, I decided to set up a company.

Robert – What is the vision that everyone shares at Codebrush?

CG – We have a vision to make games that even ourselves can enjoy playing. There are many games out there in the market, and gamers try many different kinds of games. The members of Codebrush are all game enthusiasts who place gaming as their number one hobby, and they all have a dream that one day their game will be among their favorite games of all time. If you’re lucky, you might come across some of our staff in-game playing as their “secret IDs”. Sometimes they make a mistake by using an account that has some work-in-progress features currently not available to the users.

Robert – What kind of experience did each member bring to the team? In other words, experience from other game companies or big projects?

CG – We were founded by developers from NCsoft who were working on a FPS title using an Unreal Engine 3. The people who joined us later come from various backgrounds.

Robert – How did the concept for Archeblade come about?

CG – It was one of the founding member’s idea. (a developer named Jung-Hoon Hong). At first, we wanted to make a shooter that would closely focus on interesting characters( the prototype of ArcheBlade was a shooter similar to the likes of Gears of War) with a setting where almost any type of character will fit in, be it Sword Man, Sorcerer, or even mechanical robots. Thus came the world “Tiseria” which is actually a world based on a currently running Korean fantasy novel “ArcheBlade”.

Robert – What was the gameplan to try and keep Archeblade from getting lost in the shuffle of other MOBA or battle arena style games?

CG – We’re still not sure whether our game belongs to the MOBA genre or not. Because to current LOL generation, MOBA means it should have things like AI, Tower Defense, and RPG elements. The idea behind ArcheBlade was that since all our staff were gamers of various genres themselves, if we can make a game that’s fun to us, then there have to be people around the world with similar taste that will find the game interesting.

Robert – What goes on during a typical discussion when creating a character, their design, move set, properties, etc?

CG – First of all, we look at the characters we have a the moment, and look for a type of character we think we may lack. (Eg. Range/Melee/Healer, etc) and we look at the setting (based on the novel) if there’s any character that will fit the style, and there usually is because there are over hundred characters from the novel. From then on, we build it one by one from the rough setting we have for that character, and we look at the ideas we came up with prior to that point to see if we can apply some of them to the character. And then we actually apply them on the character to test if it’s actually doable. After that, it’s pretty much a repeat process of adjusting, testing, and adjusting.

Robert – Are you happy with the direction that Archeblade is going?

CG – Not entirely because there should have been about 20 characters by now if things went according to our plan.

Robert – With League of Legends and DOTA having huge followings and giant turn-outs for tournaments, is there a similar ambition in the team at Codebrush to follow suit?

CG – We see a good possibility of this as we noticed that the frequency of gameplay matches being uploaded on Youtube is relatively high compared to other games. But it all depends on high well the game does in the future.

Robert – Years from now, how do you envision the future of Archeblade and it’s community of followers.

CG – If we manage to overcome our crisis in the future, I believe we have a good chance of becoming one of the most prominent e-sport games.

Robert – Why did Codebrush choose to go with the free to play model for Archeblade?

CG – We actually think we were a bit naïve to make this move, and should’ve done more research before making the decision. We initially thought that having non-pay-to-win artificial items would bring us at least 5% of paying users. We later found out that it’s actually a norm for any F2P games without pay-to-win or free-to-pay elements to have less than 3% paying users. We had about 1.5% paying users during our Indiegogo campaign which is very normal. If the user base grows big enough in the future, we will be happy with this model.

Robert – Are there any more gameplay modes planned beyond Free for all, team battle and Territory domination? Will a spectator mode be added for random people to watch matches or an Off-line/LAN mode for multiplayer?

CG – There are many game modes we planned, and one of them is AI-related. Also, Spectator mode is something we will start working on in the near future.

Robert – When patching the game does Codebrush take into account community feedback? What’s the process usually like?

CG – User feedback are very important and that’s one of the reasons we decided to have the game available as an early access game. However, we have limited staff, and including adjusting the balance there are many other works that are waiting in line for us, and they are things that users expect from a complete game. The reason updates are not as frequent as before is because we’re working on something big. We apologize to our fans for keeping them waiting.

Robert – On behalf of Diehard Gamefan, I would like to personally thank you for your time.